Abstract Rural women face many obstacles that thwart their well-being. Policies that seek to empower them, for example, by improving livelihood opportunities, often do not translate into improvements in other areas, notably in their nutritional status. Indeed, many existing measures of women’s empowerment have ambiguous associations with indicators of nutritional status. This is likely because existing operationalizations of empowerment often focus on aspects that are somewhat distal from factors that influence nutrition. In this paper, we present an index that aims to measure women’s empowerment in the realm of nutrition. We define nutritional empowerment as the process by which individuals acquire the capacity to be well fed and healthy, in a context where this capacity was previously denied to them. Our index draws on theory and multi-site formative research from South Asia and captures multiple dimensions of empowerment spanning domains that influence nutritional outcomes. We construct this index using data from two sites in India and validate it by estimating two nutritional outcomes, body mass index (BMI) and anemia, as a function of the index. We find that our index is significantly associated with these outcomes, indicating that, in rural South Asia, the women’s empowerment in nutrition index can assist researchers to understand the nutritional status of women and their families.

中文翻译：

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在印度两个邦制定妇女营养指数

摘要 农村妇女面临许多阻碍她们幸福的障碍。寻求赋予他们权力的政策，例如通过改善生计机会，通常不会转化为其他领域的改善，特别是营养状况的改善。事实上，许多现有的妇女赋权措施与营养状况指标的关联不明确。这可能是因为现有的赋权操作通常侧重于与影响营养的因素有些疏远的方面。在本文中，我们提出了一个指数，旨在衡量营养领域的女性赋权。我们将营养赋权定义为个人获得获得充足食物和健康能力的过程，而这种能力以前是被剥夺的。我们的指数借鉴了南亚的理论和多站点形成性研究，并涵盖了影响营养结果的跨领域赋权的多个维度。我们使用来自印度两个地点的数据构建该指数，并通过估计两个营养结果、体重指数 (BMI) 和贫血作为指数的函数来验证它。我们发现我们的指数与这些结果显着相关，表明在南亚农村，女性营养赋权指数可以帮助研究人员了解女性及其家庭的营养状况。体重指数 (BMI) 和贫血，作为该指数的函数。我们发现我们的指数与这些结果显着相关，表明在南亚农村，女性营养赋权指数可以帮助研究人员了解女性及其家庭的营养状况。体重指数 (BMI) 和贫血，作为该指数的函数。我们发现我们的指数与这些结果显着相关，这表明在南亚农村，女性营养赋权指数可以帮助研究人员了解女性及其家庭的营养状况。